Dedekam Ornamental Terrace Garden

In Bob and Nancy Dedekam’s travels around the world, they made it a point to visit public gardens. They returned with the knowledge that public gardens provide both respite and excitement for their visitors. Bob and Nancy’s driving force behind the garden was two-fold. They wanted to, in Bob’s words, “knock their socks off with something spectacular and then they will come back” and to give back, “The community has been so good to Nancy and me that I wanted to give something back as thanks.”

The Dedekam Ornamental Terrace Garden was artfully designed by Landscape Architect, Ron Lutsko to “knock the socks off visitors”. The garden moves from one band of color to the next from red to orange to yellow and on reminiscent of the rainbows that so regularly grace our Humboldt sky. Plants were selected for their foliage or flower color, hardiness and overall quality and then organized based on their strongest color attribute whether flower or foliage.

Of the most striking assets of the Humboldt Botanical Garden are the formal, stormwater fed runnels that the flow from the top of the Dedekam Ornamental Terrace Garden into the Lost Coast Brewery Native Plant Garden water feature. The pitter-patter of water spilling out of 12 spigots at the base of the Memorial Paver Terrace onto the rocks below is melodic and soothing.

The water feature is fed by a curving bioswale at above the Dedekam Ornamental Terrace Garden. After the water flows out of the spigots at the base of the Memorial Paver Terrace, it continues on into another bioswale in the Lost Coast Brewery Native Plant Garden before the stormwater recharges Fault Creek. The bioswales effectively slow down and clean turbid water.

There are many excellent techniques for coping with stormwater issues that may be learned from a study of this stormwater feature, its bioswale and its place and function in its environment.

Mercer-Fraser Company was a major contributor in materials, expert labor, project management and funding for this project.